Chase my rabbit with a knife ~ Short story

Chase my rabbit with a knife

René Adams

2,705 words

Ah, Moregrin…

Moregrin loved the smell of the upper floors. He was certain that after the fiftieth floor or so that the black wood trim of the lift had a different smell, as did each and every flash of light glowing from between the metal doors as he travelled up.

As the doors of the elevator opened and he walked out he rolled his head around a few times, more like a stupefied rag than a being. The power was here, he told himself. Yes yes yes. I can seriouslyget away with this…

The voice from inside the office beckoned him, calling his name to salute his work, and the opaque wood doors became translucent as he walked towards them, which startling him, making him withdrew his hand from touching.

‘Neat ah.’ The pale flesh from behind his desk said. Moregrin looked up and into the spectral fade of the curtain he passed through. It took away his thoughts like a de-lousing spray of soft light.

‘I had it installed a few weeks ago. Called a star curtain. Fag name I know. But it does the trick doesn’t it.’ The exec from inside said.

Overnum raised himself from behind his desk and walked around to meet the younger partner of the company. The floor to ceiling high window panels of the office changed their lumination as he approached him, so that his figure dimmed inside the office and the visible landscape of the city outside faded into lower greys.

‘That too.’ The CEO said.

The Braikwathe & Thorne Inc multiplex was an element to its own in the polluted sky line. It spoke to the denizens below like the emotionless swarms they were, surrounding its grey monolith form. The inhabitants of the twisted landmark were jacked 24/9. The windows were blacked out anywhere below the mid-levels, and if you were unlucky enough to be working in the winter months you would never see the sun, you were promised a day of frenetic and assimilated hope, but nothing like day.

‘I christen you, Moregrin Le Chimère, only the third man to witness the splendour of my new sensi-lights. Nice ah.’

Moregrin’s hand lost its strength as Overnum shook it. His heart made an movement south and joined with his organs below. His nervous system said that it was time to eject.

‘That’s what you were thinking last night isn’t it? As the dream changed and you spoke.’

‘Sir?’

‘It’s ok it’s ok, you must sit down young chap. How long since you last sat down. Here, over here.’

Le Chimère, the chimera, only chimeras never change, the easy red flesh flowing up from the floor and disappearing into the geometric architecture. Moregrin felt solid arms lead him over to the seat in-front of Overnum’s desk. His body took over as the nervous reactions throughout his adrenal system became alive.

‘I shouldn’t blame you. Lissy, Liss, no! Haha, Li, you only like to call her Li don’t you.’ Overnum said turning the west wing of the office into a single holographic display of Moregrin’s dream from the previous night, by expanding the digits of his hand.

Overnum smiled in alternating on and off reflections of emotion as he flicked through the dream. His gestures were like the gait of his questions, always said in one heavy and vapid impatience, like the way a bull fucks or a diseased bird flys, without really ‘asking’, without ever really waiting.

‘No the dream I…’ Moregrin tried to say as the parameters of what he had forgotten from the night before boomed into dancing shape around the room, and, his body said: it is ok to let go old friend, I will look after you as much as I can here, but the power here is very black, and we will have to see how it goes.

A hand from behind the young lawyer lifted his jaw back up and forced a finger into his eye anytime he tried to close them, and squeezed his trapezius muscles through his suit in pulses, as he began to fidget in the chair.

‘But you must have known, why wouldn’t you.’ A voice said as Moregrin reached for another hold in the parapets they climbed in the electric wind.

‘What was that?’ Moregrin said providing slack for Li as she followed him up the protective wall.

‘What?’ She shouted up.

‘We must take shelter. The wind is too much.’ Moregrin said helping Li onto the ledge.

‘Not tired yet surely?’ Li said shooting a fresh look at Moregrin as they lay flat against the man made architecture blocking them from leaving the departing city.

‘Look. They come.’ Moregrin said pointing at a collecting ball in the far off reaches below them. It spiked up and down and out, growing like a pain in the middle of the country landscape. The disease wandered up to meet the vermilion night as it killed the birds it touched, and spread out from its roots uncaring for the agony of the trees it touched.

‘I wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t for the theatrics old boy. If you at least gave me a ‘face’, and a suitable body in your dream I wouldn’t have minded, but to be nothing but a void in a forest, you could of at least given me a face.’ Overnum said as the disease burst out from the Petri-dish surroundings and blew the couple against the metallic wall.

‘We can beat this on the ‘entrapment via folie’ cause.’ Moregrin said looking up at Li with a smile from his desk.

‘Which is?’ Li replied.

Moregrin stood up and spread his hands on his desk.

‘Entrapment Via Folie. Yes yes yes!’ He said holding his eyes on his client, ‘It’s when the party has been aware of the entrapment and gone ahead with their actions regardless, resulting in losses to the persecuting party, but! But, but, but, there has been a second misleading variable, and one can claim that regardless of the awareness of the entrapment, that, the defending party was not fully aware of the implications of their agreement, it comes from-‘

‘Are you always like this?’ The lady in Moregrin’s small office asked.

‘Like what?’

‘Turned on by repeating what you’ve learned… No, you’re not, but you have a plan don’t you? So many plans…’ Li said taking out her e-cigarette.

Moregrin rubbed the girls eye lids as she tried to wake.

‘Hey!’

‘No, you have to fall asleep again, I’m making breakfast, it was meant to be a surprise…’

‘Be honest, why’d you fight to get my case?’ Li said leaning up onto one elbow and searching through her hand-bag on the floor.

‘Pharmaceuticals do it for me you know, what sort of a bloke doesn’t love a woman who’s agreed to sabotage the cure for cancer?’ Moregrin said beating some eggs in the corner of his small apartment.

‘You just don’t understand marriage, do you. Ah, young men like you… My mind wanders…’ Overnum said receiving a re-fill in his glass as his young counterpart shook in his seat amidst the illuminations, ‘I understand of course, what it must be like to have another man go through your dreams, but LO! Surely that’s what you were doing with my wife? The black wall, the disease, the architecture, the nasty wind, do you think that I don’t have feelings you cunt?’

‘No tailll no, tail, I, we not. I we. You. You not with LI! Back the-‘ Moregrin tried to say.

‘Oh a summits applause to the admissions of time

oh the wrecking ball to the excuses of mind

but give me the fealty of our partnership

and I show you the worlds that you have promised…’ Overnum replied becoming lost in the technological ghosts that swam in the office as if solid shadow.

‘Nhua, nooo… Nae Marsaéd-‘

‘You must wake my love, the false emperor comes…’ Li said dabbing the blood away from Moregrin’s lips in the cave, ‘What is it?’

The man closed his eyes and smelt the changing dust in the crevice. He rose and began to speak.

‘I don’t know. But someone is leaving something out. The verse… He’s leaving out… The second part. Using the verse to lie here, ba-ba ba-ba baba, but give me the fealty…’

Overnum clapped his hands killing the transmissions in the office, and nodded at the figure that had been holding Moregrin. The wide shadow let the lawyer go as he crossed over to the CEO’s desk and picked up a tray holding a glass syringe and an ampoule.

As the needle penetrated the young man’s neck and it’s contents interacted with his body he awoke from the catatonic drool state he sat in, and smiled as the giant nurse dabbed his lips.

He or she was small and white, with small electric flashes of whiter white among the rest, and was quite silent, almost completely, as it hopped around in his vision.

‘Oh for faaaack sake, at least let me see Li again! Not a facking rabbit! What the fack do you want? Oh for faaack sake…’

~ Lo lo lo, hi hi hi, you are lucky monsieur Demeaux, I am I, I am Li, I am Lissy, I am your morning, I am the last of Li he cannot see, we can have those pancakes now… But this charming gentilhomme will kill you if we do not find the warren… Ho ho ho… ~ The rabbit said concaving its spine like a floating ‘U’ shape, and drifting down before Moregrin’s eyes and falling onto his laps where it nibbled at his trousers.

Overnum waved his hand quickly in the air signalling for his worker to slap Moregrin.

‘What is it – What are you doing – ‘

‘Ah, Moregrin. Hello again!’

‘Sir.’

The rabbit bit into Moregrin’s crotch.

‘Cunt!’

‘Oh that’s better, that’s what you really think of me isn’t it, you knew about the terms… You knew about the dream tracking… You knew who my wife is… So, shall we talk, shall we talk, yes, we shall talk.’ Overnum said lifting his glass at the recovering man in his office.

The rabbit swelled before Moregrin like a toad sucking in the darkness from a dark swamp in a shoe box. Its eyes opened and closed the same way that tired but still juiced headlights do in the middle of death, croaking and lamenting in strange and lost verse.

‘You’re not a toad…’ Moregrin said laughing as he felt the poison spread throughout him.

‘No, no! Certainly not my dear man.’ Overnum said as he took a swig of fine malt whiskey, and his lacky held Moregrin’s mouth open whilst he poured some down his neck.

The toad said: ‘EEEurrrrroack! EeurrrrOOOOOOOOOOOKE…’

‘Rabbits aren’t toads, why are you speaking… Killing me… Haha’

‘Because you fucked my wife in a cave last night Mr Demeaux.’

~ Choose the next grass so carefully you tread upon mon ami… ~ Rabbit said,crawling around the toads eyes, ~ Oh don’t mind Hermule, he will be your friend too in hell! ~ Rabbit said squeezing out a flow of perfect pebbles onto Moregrin’s shoes.

Moregrin reached over and touched Li’s knee. They were watching a documentary about survival in the Antarctic. The survivalist was bending down on one knee and explaining how a lens shaped from compacted ice could be used to focus the sun’s rays onto a small collection of hair from a husky.

‘And you see, if you mould the lens into a curve, and hold it there long enough…’ The presenter said.

‘Wow that’s awesome. I didn’t know that… Hey Dee.’

‘Yes love.’ Moregrin replied.

‘I love you honey.’

‘I love you too hun, daft lass, come here…’

‘Li-‘

The wall monitor shut down in Moregrin’s apartment and he felt a thick molasses in his throat as the poison worked its way through his veins, attacking first the neurons that remember, then the muscle connections in his spine that allow you to move.

‘You can’t kill me for… For being with Li, before you married her… And still dreaming about her…’ Moregrin said as Rabbit looked up from the marble floor observing what he said.

‘But I can…’ Overnum replied

And you see, if you mould the lens into a curve, and hold it there long enough…

‘No, you cannot!’ Moregrin replied looking up and refocussing on the CEO, ‘Ah…’ He said next beginning to laugh… Before replying: ‘Ba-ba ba-ba baba, but give me… the fealty of our partnership…

So that when we are afraid it is gone

we do not separate clay from flesh.

The piece of husky fur in the middle of a white plane burst into small flame, the dragon discolouring Moregrin’s blood continued to turn inwards, but in the small glimmers he saw in Rabbit’s eye he continued to walk towards Li as his body sat still.

Moregrin paced his apartment rubbing his head and talking to himself. He looked in the mirror and despised the years he had not spoken to Li, but looked forward to his dreams of her as he began to climb into bed and turned on the dream tracking unit. He slapped a weary hand on his bedside table, knocking a half drunk bottle of whiskey in the floor as the unit began to buzz, and the pre-recorded discloser began to play detailing his agreement with the company, and the poem began as he then let his frets and gambles disappear, trying to focus on the goals of his new position away from what might be ‘pulled’ as inappropriate dream material.

Overnum walked over to his employee as he began to drift off into eternal sleep. The CEO opened a palm towards the east viewing wall which displayed current dreams, which the aged man ogled over during his nights sleeping over at the office, trying to glimmer ideas that he could use on his wife to help her love him. All of the dreams were the same spectre of flesh and vigour that he no longer had.

~ Who is this who is he mon chère? ~ Rabbit said taking Moregrin by the hand and leading him to the waterfall of rock flowing down from the monolith tower and the rocky barrier.

The lawyer and the pharmacist looked out over the magnetic landscape as the black tremor vibrated through the storm towards them.

Goodbye denizen one, said the old papers holding no more than the ghosts of ink for the future spores of flesh, held high in the implants of emotion where nothing can twitch away from the contracts of the city.

Gods reverse with speech into ever-most June, and by-hell the rain is like the way you taste, and there are new maths in the way we circle the countless, the high, and low rise of tsunami- we pass by the rabbits and the does, the stags and the null-bullet metronome stars as they sing.

We march across the soil of the Earth until the universe is upturned, and there is only the burnt flesh of our one cadaver left to dance, in the pounding silence of fire, and the celestial grains of a beach mixes with our steps, ~ You come Monsieur Demeuax et Madame Luna? ~ Rabbit says, as he hops up the bed, and we follow him beyond the protective wall.

‘Yes, yes we do.’ They said, as the malice of the city let go, and the dreams of the field shone in the geometric appreciation of the firm, letting the one and many animals return to flux.

Overnum slid open the doors to his balcony, and walked out, and drank in the slicing wind. Moregrin slid back behind him by the hands of his silent guard, like something sucked back by a quiet and instant pulse.